for newbies: why this forum is so important

This info is for people who are pretty new at recording. maybe have a soundcard, doing some Sonar on a desktop computer in your family room, etc..

The mixing environment is vital!!! The whole idea is to have your mixes "translate" well. That means if you play your mix in the car it sounds good. If you play it at a friends house it sounds good. If you play it on your headphones it sounds good. If you play it loud it sounds good. If you play it quiet it sounds good. If it gets on the radio it will sound good.

To achieve this, you need a "neutral" environment. Kind of like the Three Bears fairy tale... this room was too echoey, this room was too dry, but this room was jussssst right!

The problem with most home studio rooms is that they are not acoustically balanced. Your speakers could be jammed up against the wall on a deks and they are pumping out too much bass. So you lower the bass in your mix. But then you go to play it in the car and it sounds wuss, because you dialed all the bass away in your mix!

There are all sorts of other things: standing waves, flutter echo, comb filtering, etc... all of this stuff is bad and you want to design it out of your room.

For recording, sometimes it's good to have a very dry room, using lots of absorption on the walls. Other times it's good to have some ambience in the room (provided the room actually sounds "good").

For mastering, you want the rear wall to be 30-45 feet or further away from the front wall (among other things). Most of us don't have that luxury, so we have to make the most of what we have.

I hope this forum blossoms into a wellspring of self-help. I know a pretty good amount about this stuff, but I'm sure I'll learn tons as we all put our heads together.

Remember, if you can't take the room out of your mix, you can't take your mix out of the room!

[martin armsby]

Remember, if you can't take the room out of your mix, you can't take your mix out of the room!

LOL, good one that.

For mastering, you want the rear wall to be 30-45 feet or further away from the front wall (among other things). Most of us don't have that luxury, so we have to make the most of what we have.

I have Scissor traps on the back wall in my studio, got the plans from a guy who works at big mastering studio. They kind of bend the sound around and downwards effectively lengthening the distance any wave has to go before it hits anything. You can stand right up against these traps/pannels and hear no standing waves or any other bass coloration.

cheers

M

cool!

I've never heard of these... I'll have to look into them. Is there a specific company that sells them?

[martin armsby]

I'll try to get more info, I believe they were originally made for the ABBA studios in Sweden. Anyway most Studios in Hamburg are fitted with them - side walls too - really good!

cheers

M